Friends

Biography - Mike Manefield

Employment
history

Dr
Manefield is currently a Future Fellow in the School of Biotechnology and
Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia
having spent 2004 to 2010 as a Senior Research Associate in the Centre for
Marine BioInnovation where he remains Deputy Director. Prior to this post, Dr Manefield was employed on a
continuing contract as a postdoctoral scientist in the NERC Centre for Ecology
and Hydrology in Oxford, UK, starting in, 2001. Dr Manefield has also made four
professional visits of approximately three months duration each to the
University of Cambridge, UK (2000), the Danish Technical University, Denmark
(2000), the Marine Biotechnology Institute, Japan (2003) and the Helmholtz Zentrum
Munich, Germany (2009).

Publications, patents and citations

Dr
Manefield has generated internationally acclaimed research outputs since 2000.
This is best evidenced by an H Index of 19 with 43 peer reviewed publications cited 2093 times in total, giving a
career publication citation average of 49. Dr Manefield has 6 publications with
more than 150 citations each and is either first or senior author on over half
of his publications. Four of his publications have been recognised by the
esteemed Faculty of 1000 and he has one patent (WO9629392-A). These metrics of
productivity and especially impact demonstrate Dr Manefield’s respected
standing in the international environmental microbiology community. Since
2004, Dr Manefield has been conducting scientific research in close
collaboration with industry and as a consequence has generated a large body of
literature in official internal quarterly and project close-out reports.

Invited presentations

Dr
Manefield has twice been invited and financially supported to present at the
International Symposium on Microbial Ecology (2004 - Mexico, 2006 - Austria)
held biennially and has twice chaired oral presentation sessions for this
thriving multidisciplinary international symposium (2001 - Netherlands and 2010
- USA). In 2008, he was invited and financially supported to present at the
international symposium of the International Society for Subsurface
Microbiology (2008 - Japan) held triennially, indicative of a successful transition
into the research space of groundwater bioremediation. In 2010 he was invited
and financially supported to present at a symposium on bioremediation convened
by Dow Chemicals Australia and attended by environmental consultants, state
regulatory personnel and academia. He convened the UK’s annual Molecular
Microbial Ecology Group meeting in Oxford in 2003 and established and has
convened the UNSW Centre for Marine BioInnovation weekly seminar series since
2005. He is a founding member if the Joint Academic Microbiology Seminars
bringing together microbiologists in the Sydney region. Dr Manefield has been
invited by universities, institutes and microbiological societies to give
presentations in Hobart, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Cancun, Vienna,
New Delhi, Munich, Shizuoka, Kamaishi, Belfast, Glasgow, Dublin, Warwick and
Copenhagen. He has been selected through peer review to give presentations at
conferences in Cairns, San Juan, Ljubljana, Amsterdam, Budapest, Monterey and
Prague.

Science education and communication

In the past five years Dr Manefield has
supervised 4 PhD students, 1 MSc student and 7 BSc (hons) students to
completion. He interacts regularly with the Botany Community Participation
Review Committee (annually) and the NSW State Department of Environment,
Climate Change and Water (biennially) to facilitate the understanding,
potential and application of his research. During this time, Dr Manefield has
been invited by state and federal governments to give presentations and participate
in advisory workshops nationally (Biotechnology/Biosolutions, Canberra, 2007
and Emerging Biotechnologies, Canberra, 2005) and internationally (Indo-Australian
Bioremediation Workshop, New-Delhi, India, 2007). Dr Manefield has been
profiled by specialist industry journals (Environmental Business, 2006), local
newspapers (eg. Southern Courier), national newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald)
and radio (2UE Sydney, ABC 702 and 2SER 107.9). Dr Manefield was profiled on
ABC TV’s Catalyst in 2008. In 2008, Dr Manefield’s research was showcased at
‘Copenmind’, an international university technology showcase held in
Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr Manefield is a member of editorial boards for The
ISME Journal (2011) and Applied
and Environmental Microbiology (2006-2011) and referees manuscripts for over ten other journals,
averaging approximately 25 reviews a year since 2008.

Awards and Honours

Dr Manefield’s contributions to science
have been recognised with a NSW Young Tall Poppy Award presented by the
Australian Institute of Political Science in 2005 and by being awarded the
British Council Eureka Prize for Innovation and Leadership in Environmental
Science in 2006. He has since become a Eureka Prize Ambassador lending his
experience and scientific brand to Australian Museum marketing. In 2008, the
University of New South Wales granted Dr Manefield a Gold Star award. In 2009,
the Australian Academy of Science awarded Dr Manefield a grant as part of its
Scientific Visits to Europe program. In 2010 Dr Manefield was awarded a prestigious Future Fellowship.

Funding

Since 2003, Dr Manefield has attracted $4.95 million in funding as
lead investigator and $1.31 million as collaborator. Funding sources include
the UK BBSRC, the Environmental Biotechnology CRC, the Australian Antarctic
Division, the ARC Linkage Program, the ARC LIEF program and the Australia-India
Strategic Research Fund. Dr Manefield has managed consulting contracts with
Orica Australia, Dow Chemicals Australia and Coffey Environments
Australia.

History of Collaboration

Dr Manefield’s scientific career has taken place in a
dynamic collaborative context, and as such, he considers multidisciplinary
investigation and collaboration across industry and institutions the natural
order of science. His postgraduate studies (1996-2000) were conducted in
collaboration between research teams at the University of New South Wales
(UNSW) and the Danish Technical University (DTU - Givskov/Gram). Within UNSW,
he teamed his environmental microbiology expertise (School of Microbiology
- Kjelleberg) with synthetic and analytical organic chemistry expertise (School
of Chemistry - Kumar/Read) and marine chemical ecology expertise (School of
Biology - Steinberg/de Nys). Immediately after postgraduate studies he built productive links with the University of Cambridge, UK (Salmond)
and fortified links with the Danish Technical University (Givskov) by spending three
months at each institution. The success of these early career interactions is
evidenced by the generation of 13 publications and a patent (WO9629392-A) on
quorum sensing inhibition and the foundation of a Research Centre (Centre for
Marine BioInnovation) and two biotechnology companies (Biosignal and QSI
Pharma). He has also spent three-month professional visits working with microbiologists
at the Marine Biotechnology Institute, Japan (Watanabe) and the Helmholtz
Zentrum Munich, Germany (Lueders/Mechenstock). Dr Manefield has co-authored
peer reviewed publications with all of the above named researchers.

Dr Manefield was employed by UNSW in 2004 to lead the
bioremediation program for the Environmental Biotechnology Cooperative Research
Centre (2004-2010). The program integrated teams from different disciplines
(microbiology, process engineering, molecular biology) from UNSW, Murdoch
University, Macquarie University and the University of Queensland to develop
technologies to address specific environmental challenges faced by industry
partner Orica Australia Pty Ltd. Success is supported by 7 publications and a
patent (WO/2008/064427) but better evidenced by the continued financial support
of the industry partner ($1,289,000 over six years) in recognition of the
generation of invaluable remediation expertise and know-how. As further
evidence of his ability to maintain and leverage long standing industry
relations Dr Manefield has led an ARC Linkage project (LP0669801, 2007- 2010,
$575,000 ARC + $248,000 partner) with Orica and conducted contract work for
Orica (2006, $129,000), Dow Chemicals (2009, $84,000) and Coffey Environments (2009,
$16,000). Dr Manefield is also lead CI on a current ARC Linkage Project with
Biogas Energy (LP100100128, 2010-2014, $1,238,000 ARC + $600,000 Industry) for
the microbial conversion of coal to methane. These industry interactions have
additionally necessitated building and maintaining relationships with
environmental consulting and services companies Geosyntec Consultants, Canada,
URS Corporation Asia Pacific and the ALS Laboratory Group.

Within Australian academia, Dr Manefield has collaborated with microbiologists and ecologists at the
University of Queensland (Blackall) and the University of Tasmania (Johnson) on
an ARC Discovery Project (DP0559246, 2005-2008, $260,000); with a separation
scientist at the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (QEII
fellow Breadmore) and an ecologist from the Australian Antarctic Division
(Powell) on an Australian Antarctic Division grant (2008, $73,000); with
environmental scientists at Flinders University (Ball) and TERI University in
Delhi, India (Sarma/Lal) on an Australia-India Strategic Research Fund project
(2008-2011, $400,000) involving Indian industry partners Indian Oil
Technologies Ltd and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd; with analytical
chemists (Guilhaus, UNSW BMSF), biochemists (Dawes, UNSW BABS), ecologists
(Steinberg, UNSW BEES) and biomedical scientists (Ho, Garvan) on successful
equipment acquisition (LE0775746, 2007, $102,000) and with environmental
engineers (Stuetz, UNSW CEE) within the Poultry Cooperative Research Centre.